Getting Married: Key Premarital Counseling Questions Worth Asking

It’s never wise to go along with something simply because other people do. Being intentional with how you live means recognizing that you have limited time on this earth and using it to accomplish meaningful goals. Getting married is on many people’s list of life goals, and it’s worth doing well. Premarital counseling and the questions that are often posed in that setting can help you prepare for married life.

Before you embark on the premarital counseling journey with your partner, it’s good to know what it’s all about, how these premarital counseling questions help the process, and what their end goal is.

A Brief Overview of Premarital Counseling

There are many different types of counseling. Premarital counseling is a guided process through which a couple can explore facets of their relationship. It includes their readiness for marriage, as well as the expectations they have for their future together. Typically, the process is facilitated by a pastor, a certified therapist, or a counselor.

When a couple goes for premarital counseling, they may already be engaged and planning for their wedding, or they may be exploring the possibility of marriage with a significant other. The primary aim of premarital counseling is to strengthen the relationship, help the couple develop tools to help them be happy over the long term, and to identify potential areas of conflict that could derail the relationship.

Premarital counseling is about building greater awareness and making preparations for married life. It’s about being intentional with the decision to get married so that the relationship has the greatest chance of success.

Key Questions in Premarital Counseling

When you go for counseling, it’s a space where you can safely share your thoughts, feelings, fears, and more. Your counselor guides the process, helping you explore different areas of concern. They will help you with the tools you need to communicate better with each other, so you share your feelings, and both leave the process feeling heard. There are some questions worth asking during the process.

Some of the key topics and questions that could come up during premarital counseling include the following:

FinancesMoney is one of the topics that causes the most friction within a marriage.

Some worthwhile questions include:

• How do we plan to manage money, debt, investments, and savings?
• What are your budgeting, spending habits, and financial priorities?
• Do you have any debt, what kind, and how do you plan to pay it back?

Lifestyle and roles We are shaped profoundly by our faith, culture, upbringing, and role models. As no two people are exactly alike, it’s quite likely that you may not necessarily have the same thinking about things like running a household.

It’s worth asking questions like:

• How will we divide, negotiate, and renegotiate household responsibilities?
• What do we expect in terms of leisure, travel, and social life?
• Knowing how you’ll use your spare time and what your life together might look like is quite valuable.

Life goals and values Marriage brings two lives together, merging them into a shared life, for life. A key to this is knowing if you care about the same things, and if you’ll be pulling in the same direction. One way to express this would be to use the biblical language of being equally yoked (2 Corinthians 6:14, NIV).

Some questions to ask could include:

• How do we make faith, family, work, and personal passions a priority?
• What are our shared and individual goals for the future?

Conflict resolution and communication Every relationship will go through difficult moments and experience conflict. How you handle that conflict will affect your relationship’s health.

You could consider asking the following:

• Are we comfortable expressing individual needs and listening to each other without judgment?
• How do we handle our disagreements currently? How do we want to handle them moving forward?

Expectations around intimacy Intimacy takes many forms, including holding hands, making love, sharing cherished dreams, or exploring mutual interests together.

Premarital counseling questions to pose could include:

• How do we define emotional and physical intimacy in our relationship?
• What expectations do we have for what affection, romance, and sexual intimacy will look like?

Children and family Couples can get married without asking the kinds of questions that are ultimately deal-breakers.

For instance, it’s wise to ask:

• Do we want children, and if so, when should we have them, and how many do we want?
• How will we handle our in-laws, and how will we spend time with our respective families?
• There are other topics and questions worth exploring, including boundaries around time, social media usage, and work.

Why ask these premarital counseling questions?

What is the aim of these and other questions that a couple can explore during their premarital counseling sessions? These questions help a couple talk about topics that can potentially become problems in their relationship if they don’t share openly now. Imagine getting married, only to discover that your spouse doesn’t want children or to be involved with your family.

Premarital counseling questions support a couple as they have honest conversations with each other and pursue clarity about what they want, their boundaries, and how they can love each other well. As they share their views and learn to listen well to each other, the couple builds empathy and the ability to listen without judging or shutting each other down.

As a couple works through these questions, they learn and begin to develop strategies for problem-solving, goal setting, and decision-making. When talking through these questions, a couple discusses what matters to them as individuals, and they begin learning how to compromise and create a shared space where they both flourish.

Premarital counseling helps the couple learn, as they work through things in sessions, how to communicate, handle conflict, and support each other emotionally. The foundations of the relationship strengthen, and the process helps to reduce the risk of marital breakdown in the future. The couple can make an informed decision about their relationship, whether that’s confidently moving forward together or going their separate ways.

Is premarital counseling for you?

There are many reasons to advocate for premarital counseling. It is still important to dispel myths or misunderstandings about it that could stand in the way.

One unhelpful myth is that premarital counseling will take the romance out of marriage. Marriage is about more than romance. It is also a practical relationship. It’s as much about the romance as it is about taking out the trash, praying together, making meals, and paying your taxes. Talking about practical things deepens intimacy and trust. It doesn’t diminish love but gives you concrete ways to show that love to each other.

Premarital counseling is for all couples. Religious or not, those with obvious issues, and those couples that are picture perfect, all benefit from premarital counseling. Premarital counseling helps all kinds of couples, preparing them for success in the long term. It helps them build a strong, vibrant marriage that can survive the ups and downs of life.

If you want to set realistic expectations for your relationship, strengthen mutual understanding, nurture your communication skills, and address sensitive topics with someone who can guide you along the way, then premarital counseling is for you.

Premarital counseling will take time and require intentional and consistent participation. It could even unearth uncomfortable topics. It could bring up old conflicts that were never quite resolved. All of this is true, but investing in your future marriage is worth it. Premarital counseling is a proactive step to prepare to live life together. The counseling gets you ready to tackle what comes after you say “I do.”

Reach out and talk with a professional counselor to get started on your journey today.